Chapter 3 - An Overview of the Tatami Project

Abstract

This chapter describes the Tatami project at University of California, which is aimed at developing a system to support distributed cooperative software development over the web, and validation of concurrent distributed software. The main components of this project are a proof assistant, a generator for documentation websites, a database, an equational proof engine, and a communication protocol to support distributed cooperative work. The Tatami system design was motivated by three main goals such as, verify distributed concurrent software, provide a distributed environment for cooperative work and produce proofs that are easier to read. This system also differs from related systems on many respects such as: (1)it is rigorously based on an advanced version of hidden algebra allowing first order sentences with equational atoms interpreted behaviorally, (2)design is separated from validation, with a distinct language for each activity, (3)distributed cooperative work is supported, (4)there is a distributed multi-project database, (5)a specialized protocol maintains database consistency in the presence of semi-reliable internet communications, web-based interactive documentation is automatically generated for proofs, and recent web and net technologies are heavily used, including secure HTTP, XML, XSL, SSL and CGI. The chapter also briefly describes some novel user interface design methods that have been developed and applied in the project.